Abhay Karandikar (born 15 June 1965) is an Indian educator, engineer, innovator, and administrator best known for his work in the telecommunication sector in India.
He obtained his Masters and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; his doctoral thesis was supervised by Prof. P.R.K.
He began his career at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in year 1997.
Karandikar has worked to promote innovation in technology for rural broadband through his research program- Gram Marg.
His Gram Marg solution for Rural Broadband was the winner of Mozilla Open Innovation challenge in 2017.
[19] He has chaired the 5G Spectrum Policy Task Force as part of 5G High Level Forum setup by Ministry of Communications.
[21] Karandikar has also been the Chairman of the committee setup by the Ministry of Defence in 2018 for preparing a Roadmap for the development of Indigenous Software Defined Radio Ecosystem.
He also served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Standards Association from January 2022 to December 2023 and was a member of the Advisory Group for the European Union’s Beyond 5G Flagship Consortium project.